In her genuinely thought-provoking study, Laura Frost chooses
to examine Modernist writers who failed to succumb to fascist
ideology, yet produced "fictions of eroticized fascism."
The study is provocative and daring in the sense that there is
an almost sheerly thematic link between the chosen authors, apart
from the fact that they have all been described as belonging
to literary Modernism (some cases are evident in this respect
and some are slightly debatable). The "pan-national project"
places authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Georges Bataille, Hans
Bellmer, Vercors (Jean Bruller), Jean Genet, Christopher Isherwood,
Katherine Burdekin, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, and Sylvia
Plath under one rubric. The author postulates a line of continuity
among these authors, which assumption is not always easily tenable,
but the book reads coherently as well as thoroughly.

Frost's theoretical "arsenal" varies from psychoanalysis--
through Marxist cultural theory and feminism-- to fairly recent
theories of fantasy, e.g. those of Teresa de Lauretis (On
the Subject of Fantasy, 1995), Ethel Person (By Force
of Fantasy, 1995) and Judith Butler (The Force of Fantasy,
1990). However, there is no pronounced theoretical affiliation
on the part of the author  theoretical insights are taken
with a pinch of salt, and the socio-cultural context of the texts
tackled is taken into account throughout.

Laura Frost poses the question:

Where do images of eroticized fascism come from (that is,
where and why are they produced); what do they mean in relation
to their particular historical context; and what purposes do
they serve for a particular author? (6)

It has to be noted that the bulk of the discussion is overwhelmingly
related to Nazism. As she explains:

Although sexualized images of Mussolini and Franco appear
occasionally, the most elaborately realized eroticized fictions
of fascism are usually based on Nazism. (8)

Within the scope of this review, I am going to focus on women
writers response to fascism as analysed by Frost. A few
intriguing questions unavoidably come to a feminist readers
mind: Is there a case of matrilineage here? Does Three Guineas
by Virginia Woolf set up a tradition of how to relate to fascism
as a feminist? Frost stresses that a strong parallel between
fascist regimes and national patriarchies were drawn by Simone
de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, and
Andrea Dworkin. Frost cautions against maintaining this longstanding
comparison:

The historical imbalances between nazism and democratic patriarchy
are self-evident and do not need to be reiterated here. However,
what is less evident is how the analogy erases questions about
womens desire, complicity, and consent under both fascism
and patriarchy. (124)

Frost finds the aforementioned parallel rather general and
difficult to prove, arguing:

many levels of historical specificity must be ignored to make
this comparison, which also relies on indifference to scale.
Erotic sadomasochism and nonfascist patriarchy both allow participants
a degree of agency that fascism typically obliterated in its
victims. (126)

The author points out how "fascism and sexual fantasy
are positioned within one influential feminist discourse"
(124) in antipornography literature of the 80s and 90s.
The elaboration of this argument is one of the greatest merits
of Laura Frosts study.

Looking at British classics, Frost underlines that Swastika
Night, Katherine Burdekins fascist dystopia, is based
on the principle that "women are morally and intellectually
only slightly more advanced than worms" (127). Virginia
Woolfs landmark treatise, Three Guineas also voices
the comparison between authoritarian British patriarchs to fascist
tyrants. While Woolf reworks the figure of Antigone from ancient
Greek mythology  "not to break the laws but to find
the law"(147) , Plath chooses the contradictory figure
of Electra to reveal a complex love-and-hate relationship between
daughter and father. Within a profound contextualisation of Plaths
fascist-related poems in Plath criticism (see Jacqueline Rose,
Anne Stevenson, Leon Wieseltier, etc.) Frost argues that Plaths
poetic (i.e. through fantasy) and biographical distance from
the actual experience of fascism allows for an ambivalent construction
of the enemy rather than a monolithic one. Submission and domination
can be intertwined within an interplay between libidinal desire
and power. Plaths work is juxtaposed to that of Marguerite
Duras, whose screenplay of Hiroshima mon amour is analyzed
in depth, when Frost points out the discrepancies between the
film, the Scenario, the directorial notes, and the plot synopsis.
Having read the detailed analysis, it is difficult to see how
embedded this group of artifacts is in (a critique of) the ideology
of fascism. It is very tempting to see it as a reiteration of
the old conflict of loving the enemy, most aptly epitomised by
Romeo and Juliet.

Frost provides a fascinating list of films and literary works
based on Hitler and women, for instance, Love Letters to Adolf
Hitler (1997), which stirred considerable debate. The enumeration
is indeed endless. One could add the novel Young Adolf
by Beryl Bainbridge (1978) as an example of how a post-WW2 British
writer sees, i.e. imagines, Hitlers few months stay in
Britain in 1912, or Eva, Hitlers Lover, a monodrama
by Stefan Kolditz (1996, translated into English by Tony Meech
and performed in Hull and Huddersfield).

I would also like to emphasize that the book will be excellent
teaching aid for undergraduate classes (Lawrence in a new perspective!)
on the relevant authors or for (post)graduate courses on womens
studies/ideology criticism.